Contact Cointaker if you're interested. No idea if it's a hard price or an MSRP.

I am very excited at this point and happy I barely got in on pre order. I really don't understand all the back and forth about the display. I think it looks great and is a major improvement from where things have been for over 20 years. Super job DP! Please hurry and ship my table.

Were any new modes in the code? I'm guessing we haven't seen code focused updates because of the work going on to secure use of the film clips.

Are we? DP seem to be aiming at ~1000 TBL a year once ramped up. If there's enough demand, maybe that figure goes up. Then there's game 2.

JJP have to be looking at well over 2000 machines a year if game #3 launches this year.

These are seriously well built, featured premium machines ... given the choice between one and a stern premium or LE, the latter begin to look rather unappetising.

PPS / CGC have said they're looking at other options for assembly, so there's no guarantee they can rely on others to keep the line as busy and costs as low as possible.

Then we have Heighway, who have a large facility, and if Alien and subsequent games are hits can potentially crank out thousands.

Then there are wildcards like Homepin, Spooky, P3, Silver Castle. I'm assuming Spooky's game 3 (not Domino's) will be a much bigger run than 300 with their new facility. Homepin will definitely be capable of volume production if they make something people want.

I'm sure there will be other new entrants as long as prices remain so high, too.

I'd say Stern need to pull their socks up pretty quickly in the next 18 months or so.

Stern will be just fine as-is. Don't worry about them.

TBL at 1000 a year? Doubtful (more power to them if they pull it off). It is 10k, adult theme. 200 ish preorders.. Maybe 100 more orders after that?

This is a niche game at a niche price if there ever was one. I hope they are only planning to sell 3 figures, because if not I'm really concerned for their business.

If Stern only sold 1300 Iron Mans in the original run based on a blockbuster movie, I find it hard t believe that DP is going to sell 1000 games based on a 20 year old cult movie.

It's cheaper than Stern LE everywhere in Europe, cheaper than Premium in some markets, and it's clearly a much higher quality product than both.

Hasn't Gary Stern stated that nearly 50% of Sterns go to Europe, and about 60% are exported overseas? The world doesn't end at the US border (or US & Canada).

The ARA (manufacturer) guy states that the target is 4 machines per day after ramp, if you watch the video posted earlier in the thread. That equates to probably just under 1000 per annum. More if the line works on Saturdays. Given the quality of the product, I'd fully expect them to sell all units.

Put those two machines side by side, then answer your own question ...

IM was $3700 ($4,087 adjusted for inflation)

TBL is $10,000

Some Sterns are more than $10,000 in some parts of Europe currently. They're nowhere near the build quality and feature set of TBL. Just under 50% of Stern sales in Europe?

And yet Gary Stern sleeps every night on a mattress packed with cash and the rest of these companies you mentioned have yet to ship on time or in volume, and most have not even made a dime. Let me repeat that, they haven't made a dime. Not one.

I don't mean to take anything away from what Dutch has shown here, that's great. Here's what I don't understand. They showed TBL two years ago as a finished game. By the time it ships, almost two years have gone into re-designing the game. Where's that money coming from? How are people getting paid? How can a company get off the ground if pin #1 has them starting in the red? You'll never catch up unless you sell a lot of the pin.

JJP has shipped one pin in 7 years. Shall I repeat that? OK, you got it. Gary's been making money every day, where Jack has been bleeding cash. There's only one reason Hobbit has been delayed. It's not because they have been tweaking the pin to make it better (although that sure sounds nice in the soft cushy for-love-of-pinball-world some of you live in), it's because he didn't have the money to make it. Yes. Money to order parts and get it on the line. Not enough there. So he had to wait until the bailout arrived.

Heighway shipped how many Full Throttles? I think I can count the amount on my hands (and maybe a couple toes). When's the last time Gary started production on a pin and only 15 went out before all shipments stopped? When? I'm waiting. This whole, FULL THROTTLE IS SHIPPING was just a PR move to make people feel good. Sure they made a few pins, but then what? A few months of nothing. That is not how Stern manufactures. And what about Alien? A game that is now a year behind schedule. A game that needs to come out before the market is flooded with Ghostbusters, Jurassic World, Star Wars, and who knows what else from Stern. When's the last time Stern revealed a game and made you wait a year? Oh, but like Aurich said, it was to keep Heigway relevant. God forbid we should judge a pinball company by what it ships and not what it plans to ship.

I don't mean to come down hard on you man, but this whole, "STERN better be worried" belief is nonsense. Sure people can make a more innovative pin. But can they MANUFACTURE a pinball machine AND make a profit, AND pay their vendors, AND ship a new pin every few months? Clap, clap, clap your hands for Gary Stern people. Without him, what would we have? Just a bunch of new companies trying hard to get a single machine out the door. And YEARS would go by and NOT ONE DAMN PIN would ship. So hold your tongue next time you want to say Gary Stern should be worried.

Ok. So when should Stern get worried? What has to happen?

Simple. Someone manufactures pins on time, in volume and makes more than one pin every 2-3 years. It's not gonna happen. Gary is the KING of manufacturing, not pinball. He's been doing this for decades and will pass it down to Gomez and Co. These new guys have to figure it out from scratch. Manufacturing a pinball machine looks like the biggest B#$ch in the world, no?

Nobody will compete with Stern. The market is for boutique / high end pins. That market is wide open. Or smaller boutique like Spooky. Stern is mass market. Thing is, it's easy for stern to go both up market and down market as they choose, since they have manufacturing down. And look, if any boutique really starts to show promise, Stern can just buy them. That's how business works. They really have a monopoly.

Right now the USD is strong.

What's going to happen when the Euro recovers to it's normal historical averages?

No matter the build quality or feature set, how many people in the USA will buy a pin for $14,000?

Oh, ME, ME!!! (raises hand)....None.

I doubt much worry has set in. Since I assume their 'next' gen. machines with LCDs will also include more features generally. They've just been stringing out the old tech, lack of features and reduced build quality (which I think is the last thing they'll address) for as long as they can whilst competitive pressure was low or non-existent. However if they are only now planning their response to these competitors (save for LCDs), then they should be worried.

It's a bit like the (x86) CPU market. Due to a virtual monopoly in recent years, Intel have dragged their feet massively. Now AMD have a bunch of new products launching this year and next, which if they do what they promise, will offer solutions that Intel can't hope to compete with in some sectors. Probably for 2 years due to the lead times in the industry. Eventually, monopolies tend to get lazy enough to let others in through the backdoor. Neither Intel nor Stern are going anywhere, but lack of pro-activeness may have resulted in a much poorer position over the next 2-3 years than could have been the case otherwise.

I love how I responded to your comments with a well thought out retort and you decided not to address any of it. Don't hide from the truth my friend. Stern's about as worried by the competition as the US is of a land war with Britain.

I don't think that will happen in a hurry, since interest rates in the UK, Eurozone and other peripheral EU economies are likely to remain very low for the time being.

I don't think prices will stretch that far (there will be some adjustment). However, why not? It might be that we see a situation like the car market. Much more expensive (higher quality) European cars still sell in the US market, despite being massively more expensive than US 'equivalents' (there aren't really any US equivalents). At the moment Stern look like a GM (or maybe one of the US made Japanese brands) selling for BMW prices. Isn't that the real distortion?

All the fake European cars are made in Mexico for the US market

There are also a ton of more expensive ones made in the same factories as those in Europe.

I learned my lesson with the M5 that spends way more time in the shop than in my garage.

Kaneda is right on all of his points. Stern doesn't really have any competition. They are selling games perfectly well as-is, they can get to an LCD at whatever pace they'd like. Gray scale sure didn't hurt the Gameboy back in the 90's.

Adding to the problem is the fact that right now the pin market is HOT.

At some point the market will naturally saturate, and any company that is currently barely keeping it's head above water will go under.

Nintendo always gets hammered for being behind in tech - but it usually works out for them. Yeah, Gameboy is a perfect example. It beat the Lynx, Game Gear, Turboduo ...those portables ate 6 AA's in 45 min to a few hours, and were too big. Nintendo understood what was important for the portable market.

DMD doesn't really have any market advantages for Stern, though ...but its disadvantages are minimal. If someone wants to play Game of Thrones, they're playing Game of Thrones, red screen and all. Quarter droppers are attracted to theme. For collectors, it's time for LCD - everyone else has one...but still - Ghostbusters sales won't suffer for it.

Wii U is a better illustration. They dragged their feet on tech and functionality for too long. So much so that all the legacy stuff made it as expensive as the far more powerful, better featured and developer friendly XB1 / PS4. The NX is now make or break for them; if it fails they face major restructuring and / or an exit from the hardware business. Stern aren't in such a position, but they will be eventually if they refuse to change.

Both the facility and the machine look superb.

That's a great report from Pinball News.

Maybe DP won't be able to compete with Stern on number of units sold or price in the US but it looks like they are already well ahead in terms of theme integration, display and build quality. I think they have set out to build the kind of high-end machine that they would like to see in their own gamesrooms. They seem to be very passionate about their product and have the resources to bring it to market, exciting times.

The pinball news report think is first to mention that there is a dedicated connector for mods. Cool

Oh and the fuse list is silkscreened onto the PCB

Oh and there's spare drivers already installed so if one dies and don't want to fix it can move to a spare one and update the software to use it.

Shaping up nicely, definitely thinking about the long run.

Pretty much somes up how the big 3 automakers viewed Toyota & Honda back in the day, & how did that turn out? I'm pretty sure they've taken a sizable about of maket share since the early 80's.
Oh yeah I almost for got, my Full Throttle is being delivered Tuesday, at least that's what tracking says.

Amen

How can you possibly say anything about build quality? Wait for production machines to be in a public location environment for at least 30 days and home collector machines to be played for at least 90 days before claiming any build quality.

Recall another manufacturer's pin being hyped as the best built, highest quality pin ever. Misaligned light posts galore. Connectors popping off of coils (I stated long before production that it was a bad idea and was ran out of town; I was right on that one) as well as in a couple of other places in the game causing problems. Then there were design issues but you did not say thet TBL was designed "well ahead" of Stern.

I actually love TBL and would like to play a released one at a show, on location and maybe at VFW Pinball some day.

Can't wait to play it. Have a blast opening that shipping box & setting it up.

Well I did say that it "looks like" they are ahead. So I am basing this on the pictures and videos I have seen of the machine, inside and out, pictures and video of the facility where they are being built (which looks extremely high-tech and organised) and pictures and video of the various test equipment they have shown. It is also based on the amount of time they have spent on refining the product and the information we have been given of the process. So, yes, I guess this is speculation, a 'feeling' if you will, based mostly on this visual evidence and the information we have been given in the various reports. The real test will be, as you say, when they are on location and in people's homes and it will be very interesting to see how it goes. Their process certainly seems very different to that of JJP (who you mentioned) but we won't know for sure until they ship, good point.

However, let's look at it from another angle, have you seen anything so far that makes you doubt the build quality or long-term functionality of the machine?

TBL looks great! Nice to see it finally coming together.

They were not reliable nor did they play well at Expo 2015. This was one year after their Expo debut in 2014.

Let's rephrase then. Their bill of materials is clearly much, much higher, engineering appears to be better, and the production / assembly facility seems to be state of the art. These factors suggest that 'build quality' should be markedly better than the market leader as measured by market share and revenue.

Game looks amazing! I am definitely a DP fan!

For those who took the tour, is there an assembly in place like Stern and JJP have set up? Where the pin travels from one station to another. Just curious. Not sure I saw something like that in the photos.

Do you mean like how all the cabs are on carts with wheels? I saw bunches of that going on in the pics/videos.

I mean something like this...

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46bf555a1f2e0512a06a66c22016853c93e96495_(resized).jpg

No, there isn't such a construction where cabinets or playfields move down a physical line. Having been at the tour my guess is that most likely has to do with the facility's way of working where they just want to have the parts in stock they need in the near future. The area where the games are assebled does have 4 playfield stations and several cabinet stations where on each station specific parts are put on the playfield or cabinet. Both the playfield rotissery and cabinet cart are on wheels and can as such be easily moved to the next station. So it works the same way without a lot of the hardware taking up space on the factory floor.

Martin Ayub is the king.

(Hope I'm right in assuming the report is his work)

I believe those were the same prototype games from 2014 at 2015 Expo.

That was my understanding as well, the more recent 4 or 5 Pre production machines were not at expo.

It's about assembly line or not. 'single assembler' vs 'single task'

The assembly line model works by breaking the work down into simple tasks that are split across different stations. Simple task, done consistently and quickly (and allows skills requirements to be narrowed). ARA didn't appear to be doing that, but rather focusing on doing all the work within fewer stations... broken into three phases instead of many smaller steps. They were building lower cabinets, playfields, and then I guess final assembly. Games would be able to move between those three zones.. but the PF assembly itself seemed to be done as a single assembler (or between those four stations) vs a long assembly line.

The processing power is all likelihood sufficient to do HD and if not, it would only require a touch more. I'm running a game with a similar setup and doing significantly higher resolution that what these guys are running without issue. They clearly made a choice to keep the dot look, and that limits the resolution you can do, since as you can denser resolution you lose the dot look and just start to get a darkening effect. From my own experimentation, 192x96 is a big as you can go on panel that fits between the speakers in a standard size game (6.5x13 inches) and have a nice dot look. They have a slightly bigger display, but that is likely just letting them make the dots bigger. Keep in mind the LCD is likely running at significantly higher then 192x96, as that image is being multiplied to fill the screen and make the dots bigger, which is really done by overlaying a grid. They are probably running the resolution at something around a 1280x800, so each of the 192x96 pixels is then displayed 5 or 6 times bigger, with 1 or two pixel 'border' overlay for the dot effect.